Attention all graduating Hoyas! With the last days of senior (or junior, if you’re an overachiever) year dwindling down, it’s time to get ready to walk the stage, get your diploma, and enter the *gasp* real world (no, not the MTV show The Real World that premiered in 1992, but the ~terrifying~ world of taxes, student loans and the cliche 9 to 5).  

We at the 4E get it, and to ease your transition to adulthood, here’s our official graduation preparedness protocol!

Step 1: Check your Degree Audit

The first step to graduating is, well, making sure you can actually graduate. It sure would be funny (and definitely not haunting my nightmares) if, when it’s your time to walk across the stage, your name simply isn’t called.  Avoid the headache you would get going back and forth with the Registrar to try to get your diploma by taking a minute to check your degree’s progress, and use the fancy new MyDegree Audit view while you’re at it!

Step 2: Finish (or start) your Georgetown Bucket List

The last day of class is Tuesday, May 3 and graduation is a whole three weeks later Saturday, May 21.  Although ~finals szn~ can put a damper on the celebrations, a lot can be done in those three weeks (and the X days between the end of finals and graduation). If you haven’t yet completed everything that 18-year-old-you thought you would, get to work! 

If you never made your own bucket list, here’re some ideas to get you started!

• Visit the Intercultural Center (ICC) drunk and try to find your way out (21+)

Hopefully those late-night economics office hours on the first floor paid off when you put your knowledge of the ICC’s never ending hallways to the ultimate test: drunken, senioritis-fueled debauchery!  For added fun, make it a scavenger hunt: 10 points for finding the bathroom that you cried in after getting your midterm Problem of God grade!

• Sneak into Riggs Library

If you, too, were a dorky 18 year-old comparing university libraries to factor into your college acceptance decisions, you must have also felt severe disappointment when you saw the architectural nightmare known as Lauinger Library.  When you google “Georgetown Library” though, Lau isn’t shown — rather, the very classy and very ~academic~ atmosphere of Riggs Library is advertised. What Google fails to tell you, though, is that Riggs is closed to the public.  Time to make that Google search a reality and take Riggs access into your own hands!

• Buy an item of Tombs merch before you graduate and it’s #cringe to have peaked in college

What will you regret more, buying a reminder of your old college bar now before you miss it, or being a 25-year-old college grad googling “Tombs Baseball Hat” in an attempt to relive your glory years?  I thought so.

Step 3: Search your closet for your graduation gown

Remember how Georgetown thought 18-year-olds would be responsible and hold onto their graduation gown for four years? Yeah, me neither!  If you lost your robe from freshman year convocation, you can always purchase a new one in the bookstore.

Step 4: Have an Existential Crisis

Oh my god I’m actually graduating I have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life and why am I actively choosing to work in consulting I thought I had more personality than that except I’m actually just another cog in the machine and Georgetown pumps out thousands of new grads just like me every year I’m not special at all how am I supposed to get into grad school or worse how am I supposed to pay for grad school and oh god why is everyone I know a Fulbright scholar why is everyone so successful and smart and maybe I should have applied for more jobs maybe I should have just dropped out and wrote romance novels maybe I should have booked a one-way trip to Europe and moved in with extended family yeah Europe would be nice except the world is falling apart and why am I freaking out about my insignificant problems when so many people have it so much worse oh my god oh my god oh my god.

…Just as one example

Step 5: Map out where all your friends are headed after graduation

But instead of using Google (or Apple!) maps, go old school with pins on a map!  That way you can live in ignorance of how long it will take to see them by car, train or plane, and not actually face reality!

Step 6: Realize that most post-grad apartments are out of your price range.

Why is rent so expensive?  Whether you’re sticking to the East Coast, heading West or going global, finding a reasonable rent in a nice apartment in a new city is no easy task!  There are, of course, some ever-affordable options:

• The classic parent’s basement
• The middle of rural Nebraska
• Getting a WeWork subscription and hiding in the bathroom when they close for the day
• Becoming an under-the-bridge troll who makes passerby answer riddles

Step 7: Get fancy!

Between the culminating Senior Ball and all of the club formals and galas that happen towards the end of the semester, there’s a lot of opportunities for seniors to dress up and throw down one last time!  Remember that this may be your last opportunity to get a video of a future senator’s drunken debauchery!

Step 8: Actually complete your classes

Write that thesis! Study for your finals! End the year on a high note and get professors who will be willing to act as references while you’re at it!  Not as glamorous as some of the other aspects of senior year, but this may even be your last time ever in a classroom.

Step 9: Remove Georgetown from your Instagram bio

It has to be done. I know it’s hard to move on, but it’s what John DeGioia would want.

Step 10: Say Goodbye

*Cue Hannah Montana’s “I’ll Always Remember You”*

Say goodbye to the friends you’ve made, the professors you’ve learned from, the mice you’ve banished from your townhouse, the clubs you were rejected from, the mold you’ve inhaled, the library cubicles you’ve studied in, the twin-sized beds you’ve slept in.  No matter where you go next, you can always find your home back on the Hilltop <3